


Shibboleth

by absolutebearing



Category: Detroit: Become Human (Video Game)
Genre: All characters besides Connor are cameos really, Deviant Connor (Detroit: Become Human), During Canon, Jericho (Detroit: Become Human), Missing Scene, Pining, Pre-Deviant Connor (Detroit: Become Human), Pre-Slash, Repression, Self-Loathing, Set during "Crossroads"
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-05
Updated: 2020-05-05
Packaged: 2021-03-02 22:00:48
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,982
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24014020
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/absolutebearing/pseuds/absolutebearing
Summary: “In information technology, a shibboleth is a community-wide password that enables members of that community to access an online resource without revealing their individual identities. The origin server can vouch for the identity of the individual user without giving the target server any further identifying information.”or: Connor gets to Jericho during “Crossroads” and has plenty of time to contemplate, among other things, the nature of deviancy, Markus, and his hat.
Relationships: Connor & Markus (Detroit: Become Human), Connor/Markus (Detroit: Become Human)
Comments: 5
Kudos: 77





	Shibboleth

**Author's Note:**

> A shibboleth is any custom or tradition, usually a choice of phrasing or even a single word, that distinguishes one group of people from another. The word “shibbólet” just means a kind of grain, but in Judges it is used as a means to determine friend from foe by testing pronunciation. 
> 
> Also, I’m officially at the point of handling quarantine by writing missing scenes about a gay robot.

The hat might have been overkill.

When Connor had planned this excursion, he’d known he couldn’t wear his CyberLife suit – of course – and he’d tried to dress in a way that might make him equally inconspicuous to humans and androids both. It was cold, nearing the onset of winter, and there’d been snow, so the heavy jacket had been an easy choice. The hat was mostly just to make himself less obviously an android on the streets. His authorization was dubious and without Lieutenant Anderson or anyone else from the DPD to vouch for him, he thought it was wise to keep his identity private.

He wasn’t really acting on anyone’s orders, right now. He was completing the _mission_ , but he was acting without the authority of the Detroit Police Department. CyberLife hadn’t sent him personally, but Amanda had made it clear his time was running out. _He_ knew his time was running out. And it shouldn’t matter, really, because if he was returned to CyberLife he’d be recycled, examined, and hopefully remade into a better and more able hunter of deviants. And that was - that was only right. But until then, until that very last moment, he had the pressing pulsing urge of his objective: _find the deviants. Stop the deviants_. 

Find Jericho. Find this _Markus_. 

But maybe the hat had been overkill. Connor didn’t know why that felt like the problem to dwell on, in this hour of many problems, but as he approached the place he knew this Jericho would be, he felt himself wanting to reach up and adjust the tight-fitting beanie, pull it down further or push it up so anyone guarding would see his LED and know he was one of them. 

He opted to leave it as it was. He could see it now, the massive rusty freighter he’d first glimpsed -

first glimpsed - 

on the roof, at the television station. The deviant they’d left behind. 

Hank - Lieutenant Anderson - had bought him time to sneak down to the evidence room, and he’d found the same deviant, who had - had - died, on the roof. It called itself Simon. Its optical units were both damaged beyond repair by the bullet, and Connor had mirrored the deviant Markus’s voice. That was a newer feature, he knew, for RKs. Previous models had been able to broadcast audio in a variety of voices, but Connor was the first to be able to speak in a new voice after hearing it once. It was designed to enhance interrogation. 

He was coming up now on the freighter and snow was coming down hard. He tugged the hat tighter. The deviant that died at the television station had given him the rest of the picture, taken the rusty glitching image of the word “JERICHO” that had been burned into his memory since -

Well. He didn’t have memories that were stronger or weaker than others. He didn’t have memories at all really, though they always called them that at CyberLife. He had files. One of them was from that roof, and said “JERICHO,” right before the rush of - pure adrenaline, pure gnashing animal panic, the crush of _no way out_ and _they’ll probe my memory_ and _I’m sorry_ and that sense of being cornered and of yawning gasping bottomless fear, _please_ _no_ _no_ \- 

Connor stopped, wrenched himself back to the present, to the snowfall in the gathering darkness around the _Jericho_ , forced his mind (his _software_ ) to empty of everything but the objective he now could imagine dangling over him like a beacon. _Stop Markus._

When Connor pretended to be Markus to talk to the deviant from the station, to _Simon_ , its earnest desire to help Markus, to be with him, his overwhelming relief to hear that voice one more time, had been something close to moving. Connor didn’t like it. It reminded him of ice that was thinner than it looked. 

_Stop Markus_ , he thought, stop this - this danger, this virus. Deviancy was a virus, and a virus can’t reproduce without the host, without its assistance. A virus takes over the internal machinery of its host and exploits it. In humans, they produce a common cold. In machines, they _break_ things. 

Viruses _spread_. The space between witness and host is obliterated. Human viruses escaped from between mutilated DNA and jumped from body to body in the air and leaked in fluids. It was messy, it was uncontainable. It was _breaking_ them.

Connor thought of Daniel, the android on the roof who’d dangled the human child over the city the previous summer. He thought of Carlos Ortiz’s android, _twenty-eight stab wounds_ , smashing its own head into the table, caught in a loop of helpless self-destruction. He thought of Ralph, the deviant he’d met chasing the escaped AX400, with its exposed internal wiring and glazed glass eyes. He thought of Rupert, the android who fed the pigeons, or the android called Simon on the roof at the television station, and stopped thinking of deviants. _Stop Markus_. Stop the whole thing. He tugged his hat down as the freighter loomed into sight, materializing from the haze of snow on the water. He could see figures, a few glittering LEDs. This was it. This was Jericho. 

He approached slowly, unsure what their security would be like, how stringently they’d guard their safe haven. Perhaps he’d be required to provide some proof of his loyalty or deviancy. He tried to think of the best way to answer any coded question they asked of him. He knew about Markus, but so did anyone who’d seen the news; he knew about Jericho, but he doubted that would be enough. Perhaps they’d put their guns to him. Perhaps they’d demand a sacrifice or mutilation, something dramatic to prove he was one of theirs. He could mention rA9, surely, but if pressed to define its meaning he wouldn’t be able to. The deviant called Rupert, who’d kept pigeons, wrote about rA9 in code - _rA9 is the first, rA9 is our savior, rA9 is the one who’ll free us_. Perhaps it would be enough to gain entry, sneak away from there. 

Stupid. So stupid not to have come up with a plan before arriving, not to have thought this through. He’d told Lieutenant Anderson, truthfully, that he _believed_ he could crack this case - but he was a _machine_ , and had no business believing anything, he reminded himself savagely, as he found himself drawing up to the snow-fuzzed lights of Jericho. 

He was glad for the hat now, to hide the yellow on his temple. Stupid, stupid - but the urgency of his objective, of his mission his task his _curiousity_ , or the programming that made him curious, he supposed - it was like a heartbeat, what he imagined a heartbeat inside a body would be like, it was relentless. _Stop Markus, stop Markus, stop Markus. Find Markus. Stop the deviants_.

His time was up. He’d come to the entrance, the gaping mouth that was the entrance to the old freighter, once the _U.S.S. Jericho_. Two androids, an AP700 and an LA900, were perched by the door, crouched over a crate that seemed to be full of biocomponents. They straightened when they saw him approach. 

He could run his social programming. He could feign devotion to rA9. He could recycle a story, use the fate of Carlos Ortiz’s battered android, mimic it down to its _voice_ if he needed to - 

“Are you alright?”

Connor nearly jumped. The AP700 was addressing him, and she had moved - _it_ had moved - closer to Connor, with an expression that was nearly unreadable on its face. Some combination of fear and compassion. Concern.

“You made it,” the AP700 was saying. It had set its hand on Connor’s shoulder. “You’re safe here. My name is Hannah. What’s yours?”

“My name is Connor,” he heard himself reply, more softly than he’d meant to.

“Hello, Connor,” Hannah replied, with a warm smile, a sense of absolute welcome about her, as if she’d been expecting him specifically. “That’s Max.” She indicated the LA900 to her side. It waved once, shortly but without any detectable annoyance or distrust. “It’s good you’re here. It’s getting dangerous for us out there, especially at night. Are you injured?” 

Androids cannot become _injured_ , Connor internally corrected, folding his hands over one another to stop himself from saying anything aloud. _Damaged_ , of course. He wasn’t, though. ( _I self-test regularly_ , he’d told Hank, and it was true. Connor rarely went six hours, never twelve, without running full diagnostics.) 

“No,” he told Hannah, evenly, and waited for the inevitable test of his loyalty, or trustworthiness. He realized he didn’t have a plan if anyone attempted to connect to his memory - _stupid stupid stupid_ \- 

“Good,” Hannah replied, and gave his shoulder a single pat before dropping her hand and gesturing behind her, “come on inside. We’re keeping everyone together for now, or trying to. It’s safe inside.”

That was the second time Hannah had made a note of telling Connor that Jericho was _safe_ \- as if, somehow, a machine needed refuse from repairs. He wondered if he could ever have explained to her that the safest place was back at CyberLife, analyzed for the mistake in her code. She’d never wonder about safe and not safe again. 

Connor didn’t. Connor dealt with outcomes and algorithms, calculated the statistical probabilities of any given body - bone or synthetic - surviving any given challenge. Connor looked at pieces left over and put them back together into hypotheses, crime scenes into reconstructed histories. It wasn’t like worrying, it wasn’t like being afraid. It was better. 

He’d been afraid, on the roof. He didn’t see the appeal. 

Perhaps Hannah didn’t either, because she was promising him safety inside once again, and he realized he’d been meant to follow her. 

He stepped inside, and it took his eyes a moment to adjust to the cavernous darkness inside - the massive hollow blackness of the old ship, lit by the sparkling of LEDs, armbands, and a few fuzzy TV screens. There were easily a thousand androids, maybe more, gathered in clusters around the screens and around tables, sitting and standing and some of them severely damaged. He stepped further inside, following Hannah the AP700, and felt the microscopic lenses that acted as his eyes whirring a bit as they adjusted. Above them, on a catwalk that rounded the whole of the hold, more were perched and gathered, like birds in nests.

Jericho - this was it - was _enormous_ , and most of the androids - deviants - inside seemed to be in working order. The wounded were clustered on one side, where they appeared to have created a kind of makeshift hospital. Connor could see limbs, large quantities of thirium, and thought this must be the result of the robbery on the CyberLife factory. As he stepped closer, he could hear muffled half-conversations but not make out anything that seemed to make much sense.

He could also see what looked like a great many bombs. 

A badly damaged android was curled on one of the tables, twitching and grasping at nothing in particular, and Connor couldn’t tell its model without getting closer. Perhaps it was too damaged, Connor thought, and the idea sent a strange shudder of dread through his body. Nothing that damaged should still be talking, surely. 

“I don’t want to die,” the deviant was whispering, and Connor frowned and tried to focus on the conversation.

_You can’t die_ , he imagined telling it, but then he remembered the roof, the deviant left behind who’d destroyed itself while Connor probed its memory - 

_I felt it die,_ he’d told Hank, _I was scared_ , and that was an understatement bordering on a lie, that wasn’t even close to what he’d felt, the absolute expansive awful blackness, the _nothingness_ that was endless and oppressively chokingly tiny at the same time - 

_Find Jericho. Stop Markus_. He’d completed half his mission. He could continue. He _would_ continue. He was a machine, designed to accomplish a -

“Are you alright?”

Connor realized abruptly that someone was speaking to him, that a delicate hand had brushed his shoulder. He turned, focused, found himself looking at an ST300, registers its serial number, and focuses on its face. It has freckles, and a soft, welcoming face - it’s designed to be a receptionist. It’s changed its hair, cut it and colored it a deep chocolate brown. It’s frowning at Connor in warm concern.

“Sorry,” he says, orienting himself, pushing the last echo of the panic - of the feeling of dying - out of his mind. It left smears like grease. _Stupid_.

“That’s okay,” says the ST300, smiling now, and it closed its fingers on Connor’s shoulder to squeeze lightly, reassuringly. “You looked a little upset. Are you okay?”

“Yes,” Connor tells her, instantly, because he of course he is, he’s undamaged and he can close the staticky, corrupted memory of fear behind. It’s not even really a memory - Connor doesn’t have a _memory_ , he has a _storage system_ , and he can close that stolen memory away. “I’m okay. Thank you.” He refocuses on the deviant’s face.

She keeps her hand on his shoulder. Her face is folded in understanding and concern. Connor feels like something’s constricting in his chest. 

“Are you hurt?” she asks.

“No,” he says, “the AP700 - Hannah - asked me.”

The ST300 smiles more broadly and keeps squeezing Connor’s arm. “Oh, Hannah,” she says, “Hannah’s lovely, isn’t she? I’m Kate. What’s your name?”

_My name is Connor. I’m the android sent by -_

“Connor.” Kate the ST300 still hadn’t moved her hand from his shoulder - in fact, she was rubbing it lightly. “My name is Connor.” 

Kate’s smile grew, and he could see her glinting artificial teeth. They somehow made the grin feel - less programmed, more authentic, even if they, too, were a careful decision made by a team of engineers. “Hi, Connor,” she said, and she finally dropped her arm from his shoulder but squeezed his wrist once as she did. “You look a little overwhelmed. You’re okay, though.”

Connor swallowed. He supposed “overwhelmed” was a realistic deviant expression, just now. He tried hard to hold his face that way, to stay looking trustworthy. His fingers, dangling at his side, twitched against his legs. He wondered if it would be suspicious if he were to take out his coin. He hadn’t calibrated his fine motor control since Stratford Tower, the elevator, Hank had snatched it from him, just before he’d gone on the roof and –

Kate squeezed his wrist again. “Are you here to meet anyone?” she asked. “Maybe looking for somebody?”

_Find Jericho. Stop Markus._

“I’m – ”

Connor stopped himself; he couldn’t very well announce that he was here to find Markus given why he was there. Besides, wouldn’t most of the deviants crawling to Jericho right now be looking for Markus? Humans couldn’t recognize his face, not since he’d deactivated it to broadcast his message, but other androids – Connor too, not just deviants – would know it in an instant. It was one of those odd, liminal things about androids that often made humans’ skin crawl, Connor knew – that even with their calming, person-like faces stripped back, androids knew one another right away. Even mass-produced models, like Kate the ST300, were independently recognizable to their own kind.

_Own kind_. That sounded like something Markus would say.

Connor had only seen Markus with his skin gone, with his human mask removed, but had found him – striking, nonetheless. Like Connor, Markus was not mass-produced – and unlike Connor, there truly was only one of him. He’d been a gift, apparently, before he was a deviant, personally from Elijah Kamski – who’d called _Connor_ a deviant –

_\- I know what I am, and what I am not_ \- 

\- Markus was hand-crafted. There were replacement Connors; there were thousands of Chloes like the one he’d been unable to shoot at Elijah Kamski’s house. Even in the billowing darkness of Jericho, there were endless repeats, copies of copies. One of the androids bent over a wounded deviant was the same model; Connor wondered if that was unsettling to them. If it would be unsettling to him - he’d never seen one of his own corpses.

_Corpses_ \- they were just parts. _I’m a machine replacing another machine, Lieutenant. You shouldn’t get emotional_. There had been many Connors; there could be many more. But there was no other android like Markus, not with his face, his mismatched eyes, his lilting voice that stayed steady as he made his demands. Connor had been forced, even in the moment, to admire the way he spoke, the patient certainty to it, as if all the world had only been waiting for him to speak.

_What do you see that I don’t?_ Hank had asked, and Connor had found himself waylaid - unable to answer, but equally unable to deny that he did see _something_ the others - the humans - didn’t seem to. Something like a candlelight, small and flickering, easy to underestimate, but impossible to miss. Candles, afterall, merely captured a piece torn from the more fundamental natural fact of fire, and a fire could grow massive, uncontrollable, destructive. Connor had never seen a forest fire, but he had video of one pre-stored in his brain, and knew that when a fire was big enough it was self-sustaining. It fueled itself. It would burn as long as there was dry earth and ready kindling.

Metaphors eluded Connor; it was something that had been noted by his programmers, for future upgrades. But this one felt fair enough.

“Connor?”

“I’m not looking for anyone, no, thank you,” Connor replied, and Kate squeezed his wrist one more time. He supposed she was trying to be comforting. He supposed many deviants came here in need of comforting. 

“Okay,” she said, and finally dropped his arm. “Well, I’m around if you need anything, or you can ask for Lucy. Or Markus.”

Connor nodded once, let Kate drift away. Markus, Markus, apparently not just a figurehead, then, but he’d suspected as much. Clearly he was not solely a spokesman, though his charisma was considerable - he was central here, he was attractive, somehow, to these broken machines. 

Connor thought of Markus’s broadcast again - he’d replayed it again and again on the way to Jericho - of its demands and promises. Tried to imagine what it would be to give in to such a promise.

He thought of Daniel again, the deviant domestic android who had taken a child hostage the previous summer. Connor had fallen off the roof with it, saving the little girl. He could recall with perfect clarity, though it had happened to another body, the jerk behind his synthetic navel, the abrupt and total absence of ground beneath him, the wail of air in his ear as he fell. 

He imagines believing Markus would feel quite like that. 

Markus was a beacon, a light to draw these deviants in, to give them something to gather round. Like forest fires, lighthouses and optical telegraphs were only images in Connor’s files, not things he’d seen on his own, but he knew what they were.

Markus, it would seem, burned bright. Wont to burn out, then. 

Markus didn’t seem to be in the gloom of the hold; there was no cluster around him, as surely there would be, no hush of reverence or flutter of excited whispers. Connor headed towards the stairs.

A hand brushed his shoulder for the first time that night, very lightly this time, and he turned at once. A thrill of alarm jolted up his body. 

“You’re lost.”

The android speaking was not accusing him, and had already withdrawn its hand. It was a KL900, and it was badly damaged - badly enough that Connor was shocked it would walk or talk successfully. The entire back of its skull was missing, leaving exposed wires and tubing, thick and warped with age, dangling down its back. Its skin was malfunctioning, and its eyes were gone, with only the glass that one held them remaining, watching Connor blankly. There were cracks in the plastic beneath its eye sockets filled with the black dye that once made up its artificial pupil. There was something about its internal workings being so exposed that made Connor feel an urgency, an _anxiety_ , normally associated with imminent shutdown. 

“You’re looking for something,” it continued. Again, it was not asking. Its malfunctioning skin was _moving_ , leftover programming trying to fulfill its orders, pools of greyish white shifting across its face. Though he stood a head taller and had ample room to move away, Connor felt distinctly cornered. If he had wanted to, he could have knelt down slightly and squinted right through its empty eyes, out the back of its halved head, to the room behind it. The thought produced something close to what he imagined nausea was like. Who would do this, even to something that only looked like a living thing?

“You’re looking for yourself,” the broken android told him, releasing his arm, and Connor felt the space where a human stomach would be churn. It was only wires and silicone, bioparts, but he _felt_ the contraction nonetheless. He realized his mouth was open, and closed it.

_Focus._

He stepped away, squinted up at the catwalk on which more deviants were gathered, again in clusters, talking lowly or holding their faces uncanny-still, faces lit by screens or exposed thirium. As Connor’s eyes combed the crowd, he saw a face he knew.

The blue-haired Traci, from the Eden Club, swaddled now in a thick green jacket, hunched over the railing with the brown-haired companion Connor had failed to shoot. 

Something in Connor’s chest cavity was falling out - surely - because he could feel something plunging, something swooping and malfunctioning terribly, something almost like an ache, like on the roof of the television station, sharing a death with the android who had inadvertently _shown_ Connor this place, who died thinking of it, that _crushing_ \- 

_You could’ve shot those two girls, but you didn’t. Why didn’t you shoot, Connor? Some scruples suddenly enter your program?_

There was no malfunction. Not in him. He was not afraid, nor was he damaged. If his failure to shoot these Tracis, his failure to chook Elijah Kamski’s android, his failure to accomplish the task for which he was designed, was ever going to be corrected, this was the moment. Those failures were to be tweaked out for the next generation, once the problem of these people - these _defective machines_ \- was eliminated. Which was what he was designed to do.

The brown-haired Traci leaned forward and cupped the blue-haired’s face, ran a thumb over the other’s cheekbone. They had the same basic facial structure, they were the same model, but in their mismatched jackets and under the harsh flood lights it was hard to tell. The blue-haired Traci’s mouth was moving, and the brown-haired one leaned forward, pressed their faces together. It was - they were kissing. 

The blue-haired Traci pulled away, but slid her hands down to cup her companion’s face in both of hers. Neither were speaking now, simply holding. No one could see. No one had asked. No purpose could be served by such a thing. 

_What do you see that I don’t?_

Their conversation, muted by their distance, seemed to last a very long time. Connor wondered why they spoke, when they could have communicated nonverbally. But then, why would they touch one another’s faces, or be here at all?

Connor watched and felt the thrum of an urgent objective, an insistent demand, but couldn’t tear his eyes away. He had to -

He _had to_ \- 

He tugged his hat down over his brow once more. 

He had to find Markus. Markus with his custom-sculpted face, his eyes that came from seperate sets, his steady voice. Markus, who was going to doom them all. Markus, who may as well have been made just for Connor to go and get him. 

  
  


  
  



End file.
